Research may be performed as to how persons behave within a shop, a warehouse or the like for a purpose of grasping purchasing trends of customers or improving business efficiency of workers. For research of behaviors of persons, information to be obtained from an RFID (Radio-frequency identification) tag carried by a person, an SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card number of a mobile phone or the like; or a camera image to be captured by a monitor camera or the like is used.
When behaviors of persons are researched, for instance, trace information representing a trace of a behavior of each person is acquired. By analyzing the trace information, information representing purchasing behaviors of customers, or information effective in improving business efficiency of workers is obtained. There is predicted an increase in demand for a technique which allows for an analyst to easily analyze trace information in a short time for obtaining the aforementioned information.
PTL1 describes a customer trend collecting method, in which flow line data of a customer recognized by a flow line recognition system configured in a specific area (a monitoring area) of a shop, and transaction data of the customer processed by a payment device are associated with each other.
PTL 2 describes a customer behavior analysis device having a configuration for collecting conditions in which persons who abandon their self-service actions of choosing commodities from a self-service area in midstream appear.
PTL 3 describes a flow line simulation device of visitors, in which movements of visitors and conditions of staying are predicted. The flow line simulation device displays a probability at which visitors choose a shortest path or a main street by the thickness of an arrow.